RDS Snapshot Pricing
This article provides a general overview about RDS Snapshot Pricing, also highlights few of the use-cases in general. Check out our Video to get more understanding
What is an RDS Snapshot?
An RDS Snapshot is a storage volume snapshot of a DB instance that is created by Amazon RDS, for backing up the whole DB instance & not merely individual databases.
If the DB snapshot is created on a Single-Availability Zone, the DB instance will cause an I/O suspension for a few seconds to a few minutes. The I/O suspension depends on the size & class associated with DB instance.
I/O activity will not be suspended primary database on the following engines during backup for Multi-AZ deployments since this backup comes from the standby for the following:
- MySQL
- PostgreSQL
- Oracle
- MariaDB
I/O activity will get suspended for SQL Server for a brief period while backup takes place for Multi-Availability Zone deployments of the following:
Upon creating a DB snapshot, specify the DB instance that was intended to be backed up. Provide the name for your DB snapshot for restoring from the snapshot afterward.
The snapshot creation time depends on the size of the DB as well as the size of the file system (including temporary files) as snapshots include the whole storage volume.
How does the RDS Snapshot Pricing Vary?
RDS pricing is based on the following services:
Pricing for RDS Snapshot Export
RDS Snapshot Pricing – RDS Snapshot Export
Snapshot Export offers its users an automated procedure to export their data to RDS snapshot (or) Aurora snapshot to S3 using the Parquet format. This format is almost twice as fast in unloading & it can consume 60% less storage in S3, in comparison to text formats.
The Exported data can be analyzed with the following AWS services:
- Amazon SageMaker.
- Amazon EMR
- Amazon Athena
All the cost information provided below is considered US-East-2(Ohio) Region.
| Type of Charge | Price |
| Charge per GB of snapshot size: | $0.010 |
Let’s consider an example:
- We have 100 GB snapshot
- We utilize filtering for choosing a 10 GB table from the snapshot in order to get it exported to S3.
For exporting this selected data, you will be charged as follows:
- 100 GB * $0.010 for every GB of snapshot size.
- Subsequent exports of data with the same snapshot will not add up.
- Extra charges will be applied for choosing AWS-KMS for encryption & decryption.
More charges will apply as well for the following actions:
- Storing your exported data in S3
- Making PUT requests against S3 bucket
Pricing for RDS Snapshot Backup Storage
RDS Snapshot Pricing – RDS Snapshot Backup Storage
| Resource Type | Warm Storage | Cold Storage |
| Amazon EFS File System Backup | $0.05 per GB-Month | $0.01 per GB-Month |
| Amazon EBS Volume Snapshot | $0.05 per GB-Month | n/a† |
| Amazon RDS Database Snapshot | $0.095 per GB-Month | n/a† |
| Amazon Aurora Cluster Snapshot | $0.021 per GB-Month | n/a† |
| Amazon DynamoDB Table Backup | $0.10 per GB-Month | n/a† |
| AWS Storage Gateway Volume Backup | $0.05 per GB-Month | n/a† |
Pricing for RDS Snapshot Restore
RDS Snapshot Pricing – RDS Snapshot Restore
| Resource Type | Warm Storage | Cold Storage | Item-level Restore |
| Amazon EFS File System Backup | $0.02 per GB | $0.03 per GB | $0.50 per GB-Month |
| Amazon EBS Volume Snapshot | Free | n/a† | n/a** |
| Amazon RDS Database Snapshot | Free | n/a† | n/a** |
| Amazon Aurora Cluster Snapshot | Free | n/a† | n/a** |
| Amazon DynamoDB Table Backup | $0.15 per GB | n/a† | n/a** |
| AWS Storage Gateway Volume Backup | Free | n/a† | n/a** |
Additional Information
- Cold storage: Supported merely for backups of EFS file systems.
- EFS: Not available in the US East (Ohio) Region.
- Item-level restore: Not available.
- Backups transitioned to Cold Storage: Minimum 90 days of storage.
- Backups deleted before 90 days: A pro-rated cost is charged similar to the cost of storage for the leftover days.
Pricing for RDS Snapshot Cross-region Data Transfer
RDS Snapshot Pricing – RDS Snapshot Cross-Region Data Transfer
DynamoDB has no support for any cross-region backup as of now.
| Data Transfer OUT from Amazon EFS Backup To | Warm Storage | Cold Storage |
| Any destination region | $0.04 per GB | N/A |
| Data Transfer OUT From Amazon EBS, SGW, Aurora and RDS Backup To |
Pricing | |
| Asia Pacific (Mumbai) | $0.02 per GB | |
| Asia Pacific (Seoul) | $0.02 per GB | |
| Asia Pacific (Singapore) | $0.02 per GB | |
| Asia Pacific (Sydney) | $0.02 per GB | |
| Asia Pacific (Tokyo) | $0.02 per GB | |
| Canada (Central) | $0.02 per GB | |
| Europe (Frankfurt) | $0.02 per GB | |
| Europe (Ireland) | $0.02 per GB | |
| Europe (London) | $0.02 per GB | |
| Europe (Paris) | $0.02 per GB | |
| Europe (Stockholm) | $0.02 per GB | |
| South America (Sao Paulo) | $0.02 per GB | |
| US East (N. Virginia) | $0.01 per GB | |
| US West (N. California) | $0.02 per GB | |
| US West (Oregon) | $0.02 per GB | |
RDS Pricing Techniques
- Storage amount is charged on a monthly basis and depends on the average storage space which is utilized over the month.
- Storage usage will be measured in GBs per Month, which will be summed up on the last day of the month for generating monthly charges.
- The restore amount is charged on a monthly basis and is calculated by the amount of data that gets restored this whole month.
- Data restored monthly will be measured in GBs which reflects the total amount of data from every single restore made within that month.
Here are few awesome resources on AWS RDS:
RDS Cost Optimization Techniques
Aurora Serverless Pricing Calculator
- CloudySave is an all-round one stop-shop for your organization & teams to reduce your AWS Cloud Costs by more than 55%.
- Cloudysave’s goal is to provide clear visibility about the spending and usage patterns to your Engineers and Ops teams.
- Have a quick look at CloudySave’s Cost calculator to estimate real-time AWS costs.